Evensong

“Oh, come on. We know who you are,” Rani Desai said. “All of you. And your medical conditions. Come on, we all want this to end. Your hostages are elderly people. Go to your reserve list, we’ll do number ten, then we can move to number eleven and they can all go home.”

Jones paused. “Alright. The first name on our reserve list is the Chronic Disease Research Foundation.”

It took less time than expected—the CEO was an acquaintance of Rani Desai—and was completed well inside the hour. Rani Desai obtained the charity’s acceptance, made the electronic transfer, and sent Jones’ wristcom the page showing the transaction.

“Good,” said Jones. “Ten down, one to go. And Number Eleven is good news: it’s non-financial, so you’re done with paying. It finished at ten million, not eleven. But this one may take all of an hour.” He paused for effect, and glanced at Michael Taber. “You must get Olivia del Sarto to cancel the New Anglicans’ hosting of the UN Resources Summit at Brighton.”

There was a long silence, both from his wristcom and in the Cathedral.

“Go on,” he told her. “Do it.” Rani Desai broke the connection.

The silence persisted in the Cathedral. Some of the congregation had relaxed again after the outburst over the Quakers and had even been starting to talk among themselves and with the kidnappers. Now all that ended.

Taber smiled bleakly. “This was always about Number Eleven, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Jones made a show of checking his gun, and wouldn’t look at Taber. “We took the Cathedral last night because it was easier in darkness, and then we had to spin it out until now, so Number Eleven would get morning coverage. We were going too quickly, until the Quakers helped us. That’s another reason I chose them, though I wish they’d taken the money. Still, we got ten million for some other good causes.”

“Yes, but now it gets serious.”

“I told you. This is the last day of my life.”

Gaetano and Anwar burst into the Boardroom.

The news had erupted around her. She had cancelled her meetings before they’d begun and was already at the wall of screens, dealing with Rani Desai and the media and kidnappers and her own staff. Dealing with several screens simultaneously, like Rafiq would have done. Like Anwar could also have done, but he had enhancements. Olivia and Rafiq didn’t.

The motives were obvious. The New Anglicans’ original founders were probably employing the kidnappers. They wanted Olivia to give up her high political profile, of which the UN summit was the latest example. Originally they wanted the Church made rich and powerful, but she’d done it on her terms, not theirs. Originally they wanted the Church to run like a business or political organization, and she’d done that too; but on her terms, not theirs. So they wanted her dead, and until they could arrange that, they wanted her quiet.

Except that Anwar didn’t believe any of it, either now or when she’d first told him, over the dinner which should have been a briefing but wasn’t. There was more. Not necessarily something larger, but something more specific and detailed: perhaps only a single fact, but one which would overturn all the others. And she wasn’t telling him.

And this pantomime at Rochester: too obviously staged and too obviously contrived. She might submit and lose face, or refuse to submit and cause the hostages to die. Either way it would be a PR problem, but not an insurmountable one; the New Anglicans’ popularity, and their formidable PR machine, would see to that. But whatever she did, summit or no summit, they’d still kill her.

It was in Anwar’s nature to look for pockets of darkness, and he’d found them. A whole billiard table of them.

Since Olivia was occupied—she hadn’t even glanced round when he and Gaetano entered, and was busy dealing simultaneously with three screens and her wristcom, as well as her staff—Anwar took the opportunity to tell Gaetano all this. “So,” he concluded, “Rochester is all an act. It isn’t real. They never expected her to give in.”

“It looks real enough to me,” said Gaetano. “You heard their eleventh demand.”

“She’ll refuse. And when she does, they won’t move again until the summit. This was just a try-on. If she really did stop the summit it would be less convenient for them, because she’d have to be killed later. Their preferred option is to kill her at the summit.” Publicly, in a way that gives history a nudge.